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She paused by a square block of diorite, and Paulus, who had not failed to observe how heavy her steps were, desired her to sit down; he pushed up a flag of stone, which he propped with smaller ones, so that Sirona might not lack a support for her weary back.

It has been remarked that most of them were broken into small pieces, as though by some invader of the country; but this was not the case with certain gate-sockets and great blocks of diorite which were too hard and big to be easily broken.

The abundance of copper mentioned by the Conquistadores of the sixteenth century, at a period when the Spaniards were more attentive than they have been in latter times to the natural productions of America, may possibly be attributed to the formations of amphibolic slate, transition clay-slate mixed with diorite, and to euphotides analogous to those I found in the mountains of Guanabacoa.

This cement is composed of angular quartz-fragments, broken from the reefs or veins, and fragments of diorite and hornblende schists, cemented together by lime; it is very hard and solid and, in places, continues to a depth of over twenty feet. The gold is extracted from these depths by crushing and dry-blowing.

But it was not only in carving ivory, which is easy to work, that the Egyptian artists showed their skill. They also make bowls and vases of diorite and porphyry with the same success; and the forms presented by the smaller ivory vases are also to be found in vases made of those refractory stones.

The massive door, adorned with brass figures in relief, would have resisted a battering-ram. On the side of the steps leading to it lay Sphinxes of dark-green diorite. Everything connected with this building, dedicated to death, was grave and massive, suggesting by its indestructibility the idea of eternity.

The most famous of M. de Morgan's recent finds is the long code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi, the greatest king of the First Dynasty of Babylon.* This was engraved upon a huge block of black diorite, and was found in the tell of the acropolis in the winter of 1901-2.

The Rowley Hills in Staffordshire, commonly known as Rowley Ragstone, are melaphyre. This name has usually been extended to all granular mixtures, whether of hornblende and feldspar, or of augite and feldspar. The term DIORITE has been applied exclusively to compounds of hornblende and triclinic feldspar.

Petrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented in it is the cubit of the pyramid-builders of Egypt. The diorite of Sinai was not the only material which was imported into Babylonia for the buildings of Gudea.

Our course would clear the southern end of Lake Wells with which I had no desire to become entangled; and by so avoiding it I should cross a piece of country hitherto untraversed. Our way lay across a rough range of bare diorite hills, whose stony slopes and steep gullies were not appreciated by the camels.